Tuesday - November 29, 2016

Mass Effect: Andromeda - 22 Random Tidbits

1. Ryder is intentionally more of a blank slate than Shepard at the beginning of Andromeda. "Shepard came on the scene, and it felt like they'd already accomplished a lot and they'd done a lot and they'd seen a lot - but I hadn't," says creative director Mac Walters. "That whole universe was new to me, and so there was a bit of a disconnect between me and my player character right from the start. And so, with this, I'd really like us to close that gap as much as we can without going full amnesia."

2. Your companion Liam has a British accent.

3. You find clues about what happened to the other arks. For instance, as you locate asari escape pods, you learn more about what happened to them and their ark, and that thread is eventually resolved in a mission.

4. Some quests take place on the planet where you discover them, and others point you toward new locations. "It's about a 90-10 split," says Walters. "Once you're on a world, you should feel like you can spend your time there and complete the level. The rest are either resolved from somewhere else or send you somewhere else."

5. Despite the series' long history, the move to new hardware and adopting the Frostbite engine means BioWare built all systems, tools, and assets from scratch for Andromeda.

6. All of the systems (though not necessarily all of the content) are currently implemented in the game. Now it's just a matter of "balance and tweaking," according to Walters.

7. Enemies of the same class have different abilities based on their race.

8. Not all of the races from the original trilogy appear in Andromeda, but they may show up in future installments. "We've designed the IP in such a way that they can all show up," Walters says. "For hopefully obvious reasons, they're not all going to show up in the first game."

9. The points you earn by gaining experience are applied to more than just your powers. It's the same currency you use for other kinds of progression, like improving the hover time on your jetpack and increasing the Nomad's speed.

10. The blistering heat of Elaaden is only one kind of environmental hazard. "Another planet you might have ice, or radiation, or another kind of hazard," says producer Mike Gamble. "We're trying to mix it up, and how you survive them will be different depending on the planet. Some might require a different Nomad upgrade, others will take shelter, and so forth."

11. For players worried the scope expansion will dilute the experience: "The key for us has been ensuring that the content is rich and up to BioWare quality standards," Walters says. "Believe it or not, as massive as this is, we've actually continued to restrain the scope as much as possible so we can bring quality to each of these areas and make each one memorable. That's a term I use a lot - I want these places to be memorable. I don't want it to be like, the white planet, the blue planet - I want to remember the names of the locations and the characters I meet."

Kingdom Come - Abusing the Peasants

Other fun activities in Kingdom Come include getting drunk whenever you quicksave, because the only way to quicksave is to take a swig of a particularly heady local liquor, which means that overly prudent players risk spending half the game with a crippling hangover. Oh, and if you're really at a loss for direction, you might while away a few hours reducing well-adjusted villagers to sickly introverts by poisoning the cheese, starting brawls at all their favourite watering holes and stealing their fishing equipment. From a distance, Warhorse's much-postponed open worlder can seem rather dour, obsessed with historical accuracy and depth of simulation to a degree that makes you wonder whether this is a game or an interactive monument to a period. But somewhere beneath the boiled leather jerkin of this dragonless Skyrim tribute, there's some of the farce and fanciful nature of a first-person Fable reboot struggling for air.

The period in question is the early 15th century, and you are the whey-faced sprog of a humble blacksmith, scraping a living in the shadow of a castle wall. An hour or so into the prologue, your entire family will be put to the sword by the Hungarian army. Cue a heroic struggle to restore the rightful ruler to the throne. At the outset, however, the task at hand is simply to shop for beer and charcoal, pick up a crossguard from a merchant at the castle and track down a belligerent drunk who owes your dad money.

Earthlock

Monday - November 28, 2016

Tyranny - Review @ GameSpew

Tyranny Review

"Sometimes, Evil Wins" is Tyranny's tag line. In a world where the bad guys have already risen up and (almost) taken over the world, what would you do? Would you give in to the order of this new chaos and join one of the Overlord Kyros’ many legions? Try to create a legion of your own? Or would you try and work for good – even if you’ve already lost?

The latest RPG from Obsidian Entertainment gives you this choice. Not just in the usual RPG way either; Tyranny, compared to its contemporaries, is a shorter, more complex and oftentimes more choice-driven experience. At around 25 hours long, you would be forgiven for thinking that Obsidian have created something shorter than usual. But Tyranny’s length is one of its greatest assets; helping elevate its strengths and soften its shortcomings.

Xanadu Next - Review @ HardcoreGamer

Review: Xanadu Next

Nostalgia is easy but can be hard to justify. There were a lot of terrible games mixed in with the good ones, but by sheer volume spread out over fifteen years there was a lot to look back on fondly from the PS1/PS2 era. Xanadu Next is an action/RPG that can hang with the bet of those games, primarily because it came out right in the heart of the PS2 era. It was originally for Windows PC, although Japan-only, but somehow made an appearance on N-Gage in the US and Europe. The PC version has been given a tiny little upgrade to run on modern systems and, while it’s obviously a graphics refugee from a decade ago and desperately needs better controller support, Xanadu Next is a brand-new nostalgia trip that would have justified the fond memories.

[...]

While Xanadu Next is buggy and its menus just plain busted for controller use, the rest of the game is a wonderful trip through a classic JRPG world. The story starts small and the area to explore is a single island, but clever use of interconnecting dungeons makes it feel much larger. The entire quest is easily twenty or more hours long and that doesn’t even include chasing after the bonus dungeon. The combat is lively, enemies plentiful and puzzles show up frequently enough to keep you on your toes. Special consideration has to go to the soundtrack as well, which is easily one of the year’s best. Xanadu Next never had a chance to find an audience outside of Japanese PC gamers and the N-Gage user base way back in 2005, but it deserved far better. It’s a little jagged around the edges and could use a pile of patches, but every issue has a simple workaround, leaving the heart of the game to shine as an action-RPG classic that’s no longer lost in an obscure corner of gaming history.

Xanadu Next

Ultima - Conveying Philosophical Themes

by Silver, 21:26

@GamingGHD they look back at the Ultima series and how these games managed to convey philosophical themes. (P1, P2, P3)

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A long time ago, a series of games managed to imbue into gameplay, world and story a series of values and ideas in a way that few other games ever managed to replicate. Let's take a look at the Age of Enlightenment, the trilogy of Ultima games that shook the foundations of storytelling in video games.

Ultima

Matt Chat - On Tyranny

by Silver, 21:14

Matt Chat takes a look at Tyranny.

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I don't normally review two games in a row, but 'tis the season for exciting new CRPGs (hey, I'm not complaining!). I liked the story, characters, world, and dialog (even though there is a bit too much of it at times). I'm less a fan of the combat engine and companion AI.

Matt Chat

RPS - RPG Scrollbars: A fine figure of a Witcher

I really do mean it. It drives me crazy at the moment that almost all gaming merchandise now falls into three categories – overblown Special Edition tat, ludicrously expensive stuff like this Mass Effect Mordin statue or this Elizabeth statue, or the harried ranks of ghastly Funko shit that pretends to be in celebration of your favourite characters and franchises, but only in the interests of normalising the idea that row-upon-row of soulless vinyl shit is any way to remember something you love. And don’t get me started on the likes of Dorbz – the same thing, only with shit-eating grins. Screw every single product in the entire range. They’re the rancid Happy Meal toys of fandom, lumps of cheaply made and reconfigured plastic that this time may just happen to have Harley Quinn’s hat! Grrrrr!

Rock, Paper, Shotgun

MMORPG News - Project Genom returns to Steam

by Silver, 21:02

@RockPaperShotgunProject Genom is an early access science fiction MMO which was removed from Steam due to a disagreement with a programmer. However everything looks to have been resolved with the game now available on Steam again.

"All questions regarding disagreements on intellectual property rights have been legally resolved in the pretrial order," said developers NeuronHaze.

The disagreement began shortly after the game's release on early access in October, Stekhnovskii was fired from the project. He claimed this was because the developer didn't want to pay him the agreed 10% of sales from the launch month, which he claimed "exceeds by far" anything the game had made before. Meanwhile, NeuronHaze said they had fired the programmer for not doing enough work in previous months.

Whatever the case, it looks like the problem has now been fixed without any prolonged and debilitating court cases. That's probably for the best. The developer also says that work is still continuing on the game, despite worries among players caused by the recent legal troubles.

MMORPG News

Torment: Tides of Numenera - Path to Gold

by Silver, 20:53

The latest kickstarter update for Torment: Tides of Numenera outlines the path to release.

Path to Gold

Phew! It's been a busy month. The Torment team has been hustling hard to get the game polished for release. The game is nearly ready, which means we're now doing all that "boring" stuff that gets Torment ready for you to play.

What does that include? Well, Jeremy, Evan and other members of the design team have been working away on balancing to make sure our Crisis encounters are as entertaining as can be, and that things like loot distribution, economy and character progression are playing well. A lot of number tweaking! Those on the writing and area design side have been playing through the game and fixing any remaining quest, story and content issues. Our engineers Steve, Jesse, Dan and more have been hammering hard on performance optimization and pesky bugs to make sure everything runs better, faster, stronger. Meanwhile, we've got our artists, scripters and more devoted to further polish and cleaning up animations, character rigs, and textures.

Fortunately, things are looking really good, so we've been able to divert more folk's time toward playing the game, finding bugs, identifying balance and progression issues, and tying up any loose ends in quests. It might sound like a strange thing to say, but sometimes for developers, simply finding the time to sit back and enjoy our own games is a luxury, so we've been doing that too.

We also wouldn't be complete rounding up our recent progress without giving another shout-out to the QA teams at Testronic and Techland, plus our external localization partners. Those teams have all been putting in huge amounts of hours and Torment is very much improved thanks to them.

All of this work is bringing us closer and closer to a release-to-manufacturing build of the game. We've been directing our efforts towards that milestone, and when that happens, it will mean Torment is effectively a finished, complete game we can all be proud of. You can rest assured we'll be hammering away as long as we can to give you the best possible experience upon release early next year.

Last, in the previous update we hinted that we'll have a new beta update for Torment coming, and that's still the plan. This will have many of the refinements we've mentioned above, plus new features like the ability to switch between mouse/keyboard and controller versions of the interface. We'll keep you all posted!

Sunday - November 27, 2016

Dead Age - Version 1.3 released

New feature:

Casual mode: In casual mode, the health and power of opponents is significantly smaller. Ideal for casual survival sessions. You should still keep an eye on your resources and companions, as these are still as important and difficult as in normal survival mode. Use upgrades if you die to give you a cumulative advantage in following playthroughs.

Bugfixes:

fixed isses with full medical inventory

the character class soldier had some wrong attributes set in the survival and shotgun talents

fixed an issue with jamal quest 2

fixed an issue with dexter quest in desert level

fixed XML-Error popping up on linux when game language is german

fixed merchant taking the materials even when purchase failed due to full medical inventory

fixed some polish localization and added polish localization for the steam achievements

Dead Age

Death Trash - Dev Talk

Stephan, the dev of Death Trashshared some info about his post-apocalyptic RPG on the Codex:

Hello. I'm Stephan, the creator of this game. Obviously you have some parts already figured out, but it's also a bit messy in here. And I might be responsible for some of that too.

So if you have some questions, I'm happy to answer them. Here are some of my thoughts:

No, this game is not designed for 12 year olds. Nor am I 12 years old. Being a bit older, the high era of my gaming was in the nineties, and I intend to make a game in the spirit of the roleplaying games of that era. Not exactly like them though.

Of course you can play a male character. There should be a wide range of characters and visual customization to choose from, but while gameplay and animations count are not finalized I don't want to spend too much time yet making multiple characters.

This is no political game, but part of my belief is that people should be friendly to each other and tolerance is very important, so some of that might of course make it into the game. Personally I find it a bit sad that in a genre that is so much about giving options that the addition of a further option (playing a trans-gender character) is a point of discussion.

The game will have stats. But light-weight, more Ultima 7 than a Fallout 1/2 / Daggerfall. So almost non-existent for purists out there. If you think that stats are the most/only defining characteristics of making it a roleplaying game then we'll have different opinions anyway. Here is a screenshot of the simple stats screen, but the plan is anyway to model the actual gameplay first and then the stats on top.

I agree the combat looks boring still. Two things about that.

One: Choosing realtime was a deliberate choice because part of my interest in this is (like Ultima 7) world simulation, and I find turn-based very tedious for that. Turn-based tends to lock games into two modes, where with simulation it should be an ongoing play. What happens if you shoot an NPC in a bar? Having to wait until 23 NPCs made their turn? Not what I want.

Two: As the game is centered around one character and realtime a natural iteration now is to make it more action-like (think Dark Souls, not Diablo). In the process of that, but with dashing/rolling added it feels a lot better now. (Part of the reason I didn't try this earlier was probably because I was not confident enough as an animator. That's also improving.)

The dialogue and the setting. I know it's a matter of taste, and it will certainly not meet everyone's. Just want to say here that this project probably differs much from others in the regard that it was online from day one, and what other people might muck around with or make their jokes with behind closed doors during that multiple years of development or especially in the beginning: here it was part of the "posting daily on Twitter about it". And that will always lean more towards light-weight humor. There it's natural to post non-working or non-serious stuff. So while parts of the final game will be like that, the perception of the whole thing is too much skewed towards that yet.

The art. It's not about retro for me. The pixelart fits the right spot between abstracted and handmade so imagination can fill places. But it's a matter of taste, too, of course.

I'm happy that some people are interested in this game. And while I might not always have done the best job communicating this game, I'm learning. Hopefully improving. Thank you for reading this.

Death Trash

Dishonored 2 - Review @ MMORPG

Not So MMO: A No Spoilers Dishonored 2 Review

We’ve been playing Arkane Studios' Dishonored 2, and today we offer our thoughts on the game in our Not So MMO review of the sequel. Does it continue the tradition of open exploration and stealth with a healthy dose of RPG progression and choice?

[]

Dishonored 2's beautifully bleak world, incredibly level design, and top notch AI make for an altogether grand experience that will have fans of the classic Thief series truly enthralled. Its story is not the best narrative you’ve ever seen, and the voice acting (even of Vincent D’Onofrio and Rosario Dawson) is rough. Not Peter Dinklebot of Destiny Infamy bad, but it’s not great. That said, there’s little in Dishonored 2 that would keep me from recommending it for all fans of stealth action games. Simply put, it succeeds and surpasses where the sequel laid the groundwork.

Bevontule - Try the Demo

Drawing inspiration from a wide variety of different types of role-playing games, Bevontule is an upcoming computer RPG with a large emphasis on plot, lore and character development, as well as combat, customization and progression.

Featuring a deep, challenging and innovative turn-based tactical combat system, Bevontule's primary emphasis is on the many ways in which characters can master the nuances of their available skills and equipment setups to best dispatch the varied and highly intelligent enemies they will encounter.

At the same time, progression is driven by a very tightly-written and mythology-deep storyline that has been decades in the making and is codified in many short stories, maps, sketches and even its own wiki. Not only is the main storyline arc of the game solidified, but so too is the extensive history and setting in which the game occurs.

Bevontule

Betrayal at Krondor - Krondor Confidential - #XI

by Silver, 08:48

Neal Hallford recalls the day that Betrayal at Krondor hit store shelves in the latest part of Krondor Confidential.

I have to admit that I don't remember the actual day that Betrayal at Krondor hit stores. Today major game releases are accompanied with signing events, and Twitter storms, and all kinds of pomp and circumstance, but we simply didn't do that sort of thing in 1993. A publicity blitz back then meant hustling for magazine covers for months in advance, and making sure you had a big presence at E3. Maybe you could get a TV news program to cover you if you had some kind of exploitable current event connection. For our team though, release day was simply time off after nearly two years of extraordinarily hard work. Though we were pleased with what we'd done, we had no idea how it would be received. We'd broken a lot of the "rules" for making RPGs along the way, and the game was crazily ambitious for the time. The one thing about doing anything creative is that the creator is aware of the gap between what they had in mind at the start and the thing they ultimately produce. All of us had things we would have liked to have done better, or to have expanded further. We could have iterated until Doomsday, but the time came to push it over the wall and call it done and start work on the sequel. All we could do is sit back and wait to see how the world would react.

From the beginning, we knew our first and most important critic was going to be Raymond E. Feist. His name was, after all, sitting above the title of the game, and he'd forever be tied to the success or failure of it despite having only minimal input on its actual development. It had been important to me in particular to get it right because Dynamix had handed me the keys to his universe without his knowing who I was or what I would do with Midkemia. I owed it to Ray and I owed it to his fans, but more than any of that, I owed it to the company to make sure Ray would be on board with whatever we did. If he loved it, he could make a very big difference in our efforts to promote the game. If he hated it, however, the many risks that we had taken during development could end up being disastrous for everyone.

Betrayal at Krondor

Saturday - November 26, 2016

Dishonored 2 - Game Guide @GamePressure

by Silver, 20:32

Game Pressure has a game guide up for Dishonored 2 if you feel the need for tips and 100% completion. It contains a walkthrough, exploration and combat tips, and locations of all available collectibles.

Torment: Tides of Numenera

Battle Brothers - Ambitions

In dev-log #89 the devs of Battle Brothers tell us about the campaign goals of the game:

Ambitions

This week we’re talking ‘ambitions’, a new feature and part of the overarching campaign goals as announced on our roadmap to the finish line. What are ambitions and how do they work? Read on!

Introduction

Battle Brothers is a game about leading a mercenary company. It’s also an open world game that relies heavily on replayability. When it comes to introducing overarching goals to the game, then, a linear story would quickly conflict with replayability, and any story straying from the mercenary narrative would quickly feel artificial and conflict with what the game is supposed to be about. Maybe you care about saving the world or the fate of some princess, maybe you don’t, but it’s for you alone to make that call, and we don’t want to force you into a story that may not align at all with how you want to play a game that should be about your mercenary company. Indeed, the one constant in every campaign, and the one constant for everyone enjoying the game, is building up your own mercenary company, and that’s why this is and will be the overarching goal of the game.

We’ll be introducing 3 different aspects to support this further and give you more sense of purpose, progression and challenge; ambitions, the ability to finish your campaign by retiring from your company, and late game crises. Each of these will be covered in detail in the weeks to come with their very own dev blogs, and we’re starting things off by taking a look at the first of these aspects today: ambitions.

Ambitions

Not surprisingly, players approach the game quite differently. While some easily motivate themselves to build up their company and pick up challenges on their own for dozens of hours, if not more, others crave for being provided with more direction and structure. We’re introducing ambitions as mid-term milestones for you to work towards on the path of forging a legendary company in a way that fits the game’s narrative and lets you earn unique rewards.

Battle Brothers

Legrand Legacy - Kickstarter Update

by Hiddenx, 08:15

Learn more about Tel Harran - The City of Slavers - in this Kickstarter update for Legrand Legacy:

Tel Harran - The City of Slavers

How is everyone enjoying their weekend? Ours is off to a great start: we’re thrilled to mention that Legrand Legacy is now over 30% funded thanks to all of your support, so be sure to continue to share the link to the Kickstarter everywhere!

Legrand is home to a plethora of fascinating landscapes and cultures. Today we start with the first stop in our tour of some of the game’s regions. Who knows, we might have time to give you a sneak peak at some of the regions we’re currently working on! For our first stop, it is time to visit Tel Harran, the City of Slavers.

The city of Tel Harran was built by the Ahrimans, a race of intelligent bipedal lions, to show their superiority over humans. The citizens of Tel Harran have been practicing slavery since the city was founded, and their main source of entertainment involves having slaves fight each other to the death in the blood arena, which is exactly where Finn’s (mis)adventure begins.

If you have played the Legrand Legacy Pre-Alpha Prologue, then you know there are quite a bit of things to do in the bustling Harrean Market! You can visit the apothecary to get some unique healing items, such as the Bloodstone Shards and Crossbones, or you can go to the Blacksmith to purchase swords and armors - just as Master Geddo orders. If you fancy a ride on the Ruggamsh, it’s also quite a steal at only 50 Danaar!

Rebalanced Scaurus' spear and shield, and made them unique instead of crafted.

New Bomb Mechanics:

Chance to knockdown is now tied to the CS chance and CON (lower for high CON characters, higher for low CON characters). Before it was tile based (100% if you were at the center, half for each tile away).

The CS bonus is 30% at the center of the explosion and goes down with every tile.

Added chance to damage armor. Frag bombs increases the chance.

Criticals increase damage.

Fixes:

Added Shield Bash ability to tower shields

Fixed the passive bonus info for bows and xbows.

Fixed camera jumping up and down on character switch

Fixed potent poison's damage

Fixed wrong status icon tooltips displayed over portraits

You can no longer dismiss allies during combat.

Fixed getting One Man Band instead of Tinman if you won in normal or hard difficulties ironman.

Startrail HD

The Dwarves - Meet "Narmora" Video

by Silver, 19:15

@Gamebanshee they have the latest hero video from The Dwarves known as Narmora.

The latest Meet the Dwarves video from KING Art Games introduces Narmora the Assassin, an elf who can leap around the battlefield and backstab enemies, sometimes even chaining kills with her Shadow Death skill. Take a look at the video presentation below:

The Dwarves

Mass Effect: Andromeda - Absent Races?

by Silver, 19:07

@RockPaperShotgunMass Effect: Andromeda is set in a different region of space but don't be surprised to see some familiar races show up.

Krogans are reportedly going to be there too, but apparently don't have their own ship. There's evidence to suggest that one of the blighters will fetch up on your team, however. The short-tempered rhino-Klingons feel a bit less played out somehow, but perhaps that's because they're based on a clearer, more timeless archetype and their aggressive nature can keep them in the frenemies bracket without requiring elaborate new explanation.

None of the other existent ME races have been spotted anywhere as yet. This doesn't mean a few of 'em them won't crop up somewhere in Andromeda, but creative director Mac Walters has told Game Informer that "For hopefully obvious reasons, they're not all going to show up in the first game." My guess would be that ‘obvious' means ‘we don't want to do basically the same thing all over again.'

Leaving out the factions we know are there, those in contention to be absent from the new galaxy are Quarians, Geth, Drell, Volus, Batarians, Vorcha, Elcor and Hanar.

WHICH IS ALL THE BEST ONES. Apart from the Vorcha. Space-goblins are too obvious.

I'll particularly miss the Hanar and the Elcor if they don't show up. Actual Otherness, not just more bipeds. Fortunately, Walters goes on to say that absent friends may not be eternally absent. "We've designed the IP in such a way that they can all show up." Even if these chaps didn't get their own colony ships, space magic can solve anything, remember.

Project Wright - The Outsiders David Goldfarb

"It would be great if people did get emotionally attached to the creature, for sure," he says. "Certainly the incredible feedback we had from the Unity teaser we released gives us hope they might! As far as people relating to them being potentially difficult, I don't think so. There is a sort of universality of experience that lets us have empathy for animals, robots, and whatever else the imagination can come up with in fiction, film, and games."

As for the Dark Ages setting, Goldfarb says it allows the developers to root the game in history, while still giving them some freedom to be creative. I ask him what makes this time period so interesting. "We know comparatively little about it, but enough to ground some of the more fantastic concepts of the game. I really think using history as a familiarity base helps make the fantasy stronger when you deviate from it, as opposed to creating a believable new world from whole cloth. That's much harder."

Dark Souls III - Update 1.09 available

This new patch for Dark Souls 3 fixes a number of issues in the Painted World of Ariandel, in the Undead Match, and in the Grand Archives.

Furthermore, this patch fixes an issue where it becomes impossible to progress further in the game because, Friede occasionally does not respawn as Blackflame Friede, fixes an issue where the application would freeze upon trying to load a 6-Player undead Match, and comes with various game balance tweaks.

Dark Souls 3 - Update 1.09 Changelog:

Updated multiplayer in the Painted World of Ariandel so that guests can also fight Sir Vilhelm.

Fixed an issue in the Painted World of Ariandel where Sir Vilhelm would get trapped in the rocks.

Fixed an issue in the Painted World of Ariandel where Sir Vilhelm would disappear/reappear in certain areas.

Fixed an issue in the Painted World of Ariandel where the character name is not displayed when locked on to Livid Pyromancer Dunnel.

Fixed an issue where it becomes impossible to progress further in the game because, Friede occasionally does not respawn as Blackflame Friede.

Fixed an issue in the Painted World of Ariandel where the Gravetender Greatwolf would not appear in the battle.

Fixed an issue in the Painted World of Ariandel where a crab enemy would float in the air if led to a certain location.

Fixed an issue in the Painted World of Ariandel where a certain Birch Woman would suddenly appear directly in front of the player.

Fixed an issue in the Painted World of Ariandel where certain crystal lizards would not move until they began to attack.

Fixed an issue in the Painted World of Ariandel where the crab enemies movement patterns would change if the player repeatedly saved/loaded data near them.

Fixed an issue in the Painted World of Ariandel where the knight enemies in the tower would disappear if the player repeatedly saved/loaded data in that area.

Fixed an issue in the Painted World of Ariandel where a bridge would break in the host's side, but not on the guest's side.

Fixed an issue where the application would freeze upon trying to load a 6-Player undead Match.

Fixed an issue in the Undead Match where the controls at times become unresponsive when joining a session.

Fixed an issue in the Undead Match where consumable items were not restored after the battle ended.

Fixed an issue in the Undead Match where the player is unable to see other players' soceries such as Homing Soulmass, Homing Crystal Soulmass, etc.

Fixed an issue where some motions which were improved in patch 1.08 did not take effect when a weapon was equipped to the left hand.

Fixed an issue where the weight of Curved Swords fluctuated in Regulation 1.22.

Fixed an issue where the player can fall from any height by repeatedly performing the Crow Quills skill while the Silvercat Ring is equipped.

Fixed an issue where player could not be absolved of sin as long as Siegward of Catarina remained in Irithyll of the Boreal Valley.

Fixed an issue where the player was able to leave the area during the battle with the Crystal Sage.

Fixed an issue in the Grand Archives where the Elder Prince, Lorian would warp outside of the boss area.

Fixed an issue in the Grand Archives where a boss battle would start upon returning from a multiplayer session.

Fixed an issue where the guest could enter the boss area before the host.

Dark Souls III

Thursday - November 24, 2016

Warshift - Review @brainyandnerdy

by Silver, 23:28

Warshift is reviewed at brainy and nerdy and they find it worthy of your time.

...

The WARSHIFT we have access to now can easily be called experimental, giving you third-person control of your units, the ability to build bases, customize your vehicles and command large armies all at (approximately) the same time, so there is no wonder that you get to feel overwhelmed at times.

The WARSHIFT lore

The story of the game is set in 2062 on the colony Enigma that gets invaded by the Atroid aliens coming from a parallel world. Since they are spectral, the aliens covered their shapes with exoskeletons (a convenient way of introducing robot designs) and started building an army that turned half of the planet into a desert environment. To answer this threat, the Delta battalion was created with robots of their own and cyber-guards.

The commander of these armies leads through the telepathic skills from behind a mothership called the ARK and they can join the fight as well by operating a combat avatar that is basically the hero-unit of the game. You can improve this unit with new weapons, upgrades and even transform it into a more powerful unit. Some of the commanders can change between ground and flying mode and there are many customization options for them.

Warshift

Guido Henkel - When text generation isn't enough

by Silver, 23:07

Guido Henkel maintains a blog and has written a three part series about text generation in RPGs and how it adds depth to the narrative. (P1, P2, P3) Guido has worked on RPGs such as Planescape Torment and the Realms of Arkania games.

One of the key elements in your toolbox when developing role-playing or adventure games is a smart text generation stage that allows you to intelligently create dynamic text strings on the fly so that you can embed item names, monster names, character names and other things right in the text. Simple enough, right? Well, perhaps not as you shall see.

Even in today's world of high-end RPGs, we still frequently see text output such as this:Sword taken!Acquired item: Sword

I may be over-simplifying this right now for illustrative purposes, but these impersonal, one-fits-all text snippets are the result of over thirty years of trying to avoid one basic, underlying problem-grammar in text generation.Dynamic text generation adds depth to your narrative

See, in order to keep things a bit more interesting, the designers could just as well have picked a different sentence and made it look like thisSamwise picks up the sword and gives it a quick look-over before stowing it away.

or at the very least, in the fashion of old text adventure games, add an article to the respective words.You pick up a sword.

Naturally, the requirement for longer text changes with each game. Some clearly keep text short as not to get in the way of gameplay, but games that rely heavily on text are better served with more verbose string generation. It is much more in line with the narrative storytelling that classic role-playing games were striving for, and it would create a whole lot more depth, wouldn't it? It would, no doubt, and it was one of the key ingredients that made the Realms of Arkania games such a rich and incredibly detailed experience. So why aren't more developers doing it? Are they truly so afraid that people don't like to read? Hardly. If any audience in the computer game world is willing to read voraciously, it is role-players and adventurers.

General News

Jupiter Hell - Greenlight and Concept Art

Jupiter Hell has 19 days to get 30K. In the latest update the game is on Greenlight and they show off some concept art.

In important news, Jupiter Hell is now on Steam Greenlight! Please go upvote us on Greenlight if you want to see the game on Steam. And tell all your friends to upvote us too! And your mum, of course.

We have high hopes of getting on GOG.com with a DRM-free version too - vote here!

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What's next?

In upcoming updates we'll have more info on character progression, tactical vs strategic challenges, engine design, a Roguelike Radio episode about Jupiter Hell and much more. In the meantime don't miss out on our regular development livestreams on Twitch where you can see more of how the game is built and ask Kornel questions directly.

Kickstarter Games

Hellhunter - Whats Next?

At the Ballistic Interactive forums they discuss the next steps for Hellhunter which looks increasingly likely not to fund.

As everyone noticed, crowdfunding was a no go, but the support so far has been amazing!Rest assured, this will not stop Hellhunter!

Below you can see our next plans of action and follow along to help us through the journey.

2nd Crowdfunding - it already proved as a poor option, and the worst part is, it’s full time work that stops us from developing the game.

Publishers - we’ve already had several offers from big names, we can’t mention specifics due to legal stuff. But we can say that while that means a bigger game & lotsa cash, it also means a watered down Hellhunter for greater profit.

Private Investor run - we’ve received mails by fans who want to send their original pledges. While we’re still looking into the legalities, we’re thinking of something similar to kickstarter, that actually doubles your investment, it will likely be private.

Early access - Greenlight has opened the possibility of early access. It has pros and cons, but it also means development freedom, and implementing a lot more cool stuff, from extra jobs/enemies (shapeshifters, yokai, etc) to deep rpg skill system.